Decision Support for SWaP-C during Design Space Exploration of Flexible Ships

摘要

This paper explores the potential costs and benefits of additional space, weight, power, and cooling (SWaP-C) allocations for warship designs to address issues related to modernization and upgrade of individual ships, as well as mod-repeat variants of ship classes. A balance must be struck between the initial acquisition and operating costs of the vessel and the cost of modernization. These all depend greatly on the initial SWaP-C allocation. A network of surrogate models trained using ship concept data gathered during a design space exploration quantifies the tradeoffs between total ownership cost and platform adaptability in early stage design. The approach scales to large design spaces, supporting decision makers' needs to understand the relationships between many platform, combat system, and mission parameters. Using a network of surrogate models, we uncover a nonlinear and unintuitive relationship between total ownership cost and the size of the ship's SWaP-C allocation for a notional surface combatant. Because high electrical power and outfit densities can drive up platform acquisition cost, our analysis shows that additional SWaP-C allocation can, in some cases, lower total ownership cost by decreasing the ship's density metrics. Using this methodology, decision support tools can uncover new strategies to hedge risk and better inform questions of total ownership cost in early stage design, when the majority of cost is committed.